About

Beagle Radio was setup in 2014 by a group of people in Whangārei who listen to a lot of music and who like radio and who felt that commercial radio here was hurting our ears and minds.

We did a bunch of reading and then bought, borrowed (thanks Buddhi from Food for Life who gave us our first transmitter and aerial) and begged the gear we needed to start a lower power FM community radio station (send an email if you’d like a free copy of our startup guide). We started broadcasting upstairs in Mike (Digging Up Old Bones Thursday 6-8pm) and Rachel’s business on Riverside Drive, The Woodshed. Trent (you bloody legend) built our website which Big Fish Creative hosted for us.

After a year we moved to our new studio at ONEONESIX on Bank Street, Whangārei where we’re the noisy little flatmates of the amazing theatre co-op Company of Giants.

Beagle Radio DJs can play and say what they want. You won’t hear any ads (we run on DJ contributions and fundraising). You will hear amazing and sometimes weird music you might not have have heard before. You’ll also hear DJs who can talk knowledgeably about the music they play and why it makes them happy. We try and talk to local community peeps who we like and who we reckon are doing important and interesting things in Whangārei.

Our FM frequency is 88.1…but driving north you’ll lose us around the public bar of the KT because by law a low power FM station can only have a 1 watt transmitter. You can hear us a little further heading south but if you want to get an uninterrupted earful of Beagle then listen to us online here. We stream 24 / 7 and have an amazing playlist that churns out epic tunes when there aren’t any DJs on air. Our playlist was impeccably curated by foundation Beagle Richard Holland. Richard died in early 2017. His Monday evening show No Future Til Now (a selection still available in our Podcasts search “Richard”) was essential listening. Richard also laid out the studio, labelled cables, kept things ordered and provided wise counsel when we couldn’t agree on things. We miss him.

We have dedicated student shows 5 days a week from 4-6pm. We have DJs ranging in age from 9 to 60 something.

We’re always looking for more DJs so if you want to get on the air, have a read of our DJ agreement and then send us an email. You can come in to the studio and see what’s involved in doing your own show – the tech stuff is pretty easy and it really doesn’t matter if you make a stuff up because we don’t have any advertisers and none of us care too much for pro DJ patter.